Maybe Schieffer should Face the nation? 

I tried to listen to Sunday's Face The Nation podcast, an interview with Rahm Emanuel, but I couldn't stand it. I've really gotten out of the habit, and now with fresh ears I know exactly what's wrong. I want the interviews to be grounded in the reality that we, the people, live -- not the make-believe logic that governs the ruling class in DC. Schieffer kept asking questions Republicans would ask to try to make trouble, but I understood they were based on an unstated and unproved premise that earmarks are inherently evil. Emanuel was answering the questions directly -- yes we will have earmarks. Schieffer kept playing the gotcha game, but it was stupid, Emanuel had conceded the point! OMG.

Our economy is crumbling, and these guys are arguing nonsense. We have important business to conduct, saving what we have left of our way of life. But you can't have a realistic conversation without some supposed "journalist" trying to trap you into telling a truth you're willing to stipulate.

The solution is simple -- give Schieffer a script written by real people, and if he won't do it, get someone who will. There's no time to screw around. We need to get real, quickly, without any delay.

Now for the good news, sorta. I listened to a fantastic interview by Terry Gross with Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the IMF. It's both sobering and encouraging. He lays out what we need to do, simply and clearly. It's just common sense, highly recommended.

Archiving your tweets in XML 

When I mentioned that I had a tool that archives my Twitter posts, and those of people I follow, a fair number of people asked that I release the code. I have done so, the app has a user interface and docs, and if you want to try it out or run it, you're welcome to.

The software runs in the OPML Editor, on Mac or Windows. It maintains a folder of folders of OPML files, one for each user, organized in a calendar structure, one for each day; and it keeps an index, also in OPML, and a weblogs.com-compatible changes.xml file for the whole thing. The pointers in this paragraph point into my archive. If you run the software, you will have your own versions.

I also added a feature that automatically (and optionally) synchronizes the folder with a structure on Amazon S3. I want to encourage people to try out S3. You don't need a lot of technical skills to do it. I've included a section in the Howto that walks you through it.

If all this sounds confusing, start here, and follow the instructions, carefully.

http://editor.opml.org/twitterCalendarTool.html

If you have questions, post them here or as a comment on the Howto.

Good luck and I hope you enjoy it!

PS: There may be some interesting applications that can be built on this structure of folders.

Poor man's email? 

One of my favorite blogsports for the last couple of years is pondering what Twitter is. Here are some of the things I've come up with:

1. Personal notepad.

2. Coral reef.

3. Publishing platform.

4. River of news.

I'm sure there are others, and as I think of them I'll add to the list.

But one thing I never thought of Twitter as was Poor Man's Email, which is how Google CEO Eric Schmidt described it to analysts yesterday.

My first inclination was to shout out something about Schmidt, but I held on to it, instead deciding to give it some thought and let other people go first. Surprisingly, there hasn't been much reaction.

Schmidt has a PhD, and a long track record in the industry before he went to Google. I have a postulate that if very few people do something then it must be hard, and therefore whoever is doing it must be smart. So when people say Steve Ballmer is dumb, I don't buy it. Same with Schmidt. So I wonder how calculated the statement is, or if I'm missing something -- because it never, ever occurred to me that Twitter was any kind of email, rich man's, poor man's or middle class.

I couldn't imagine two things being more different, Twitter and email.

1. Twitter is primarily one-to-many, where email is primarily one-to-one.

2. Twitter is by default public, where email is by default private.

3. Could you use email to implement something Twitter-like? Yes. Could you use Twitter to implement something email-like? Yes. But neither is the same as the other.

Schmidt talks about software the way I think about it. Once you have a base set of features it's an interesting puzzle to decide how to evolve it. There's no doubt Twitter has a tricky evolution in front of it. No matter what it does, it's likely to upset users, just as every Facebook move inspires an uprising. If Twitter had established a history of quick feature upgrades it would be a different story, but there were no new features in 2008, and so far none in 2009. That's a long time between changes. At some point they're going to add new features, if only to keep even with the competition that is sure to come. What they choose to do will set expectations for what's to come. The longer they wait, the harder it becomes.

So Schmidt laid it out.

The key question is -- does the basic unit of Twitter change and if so, how? Is the 140-character limit sacred (my guess is yes). What metadata will accompany a twit? This is where it gets interesting. It's hard to imagine Twitter passing on the temptation to add location data to each message. What about the URL? Would they consider moving the link out of the 140 character space and making it part of the package? What about incorporating "re-tweets" into the architecture, instead of forcing users to invent new language, and using up another 20 characters of the 140 (by convention). They could make a lot of improvements if they added more structure to a tweet. I'm sure there are people of both minds inside the Twitter company.

Another takeaway from this is that Google is watching. If Google is preparing their own Twitter, what will it look like? Will it have a different, incompatible API? (My guess, probably. Google will make their own play for developers.) Will it have the same limits as Twitter? (Probably not. This is a very easy way to put pressure on Twitter, even when they have the installed base advantage. Users will say "If Google can do it, why can't Twitter?")

In Marketing Warfare, Ries & Trout tell the story of how Pepsi got a slice of Coke's market in the 1930s based on bottle size (page 119). Coke had a huge installed base of machines that could only serve 6.5-ounce nickel bottles, which they thought of as the perfect size for a cola drink. Pepsi thought 12-ounce bottles were better, so they came at Coke with the larger bottle. Coke was wrong, but it took a long time to figure it out. Eventually they threw out their machines and bottles and matched Pepsi.

Pepsi-Cola hits the spot. Twelve full ounces, that's a lot. Twice as much for a nickel, too. Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you!

This is why Google is likely to have a 160 character limit. (People who said Schmidt was in error didn't consider the possibility that it was a deliberate misstatement.) And it seems likely Google's Twitter will be based on GMail. (Paul Bucheit, a founder of FriendFeed, could probably comment on the likelihood of this working.)

Finally, I couldn't help but notice how similar Google's reaction to Twitter is to the reaction of all market leaders to initially successful upstarts. It's the same reaction Alta Vista and Yahoo had to Google when they were young. "Search is only part of a portal," they sniffed. You can make a hugely long list of BigCo's that failed to understand the threat presented by upstarts, and lived to regret it. It's hard to think of a a single example of a BigCo that took a threat seriously when it (based on historical hindsight) needed to. Maybe this is because people like Schmidt, while they are educated, and intelligent, weren't there when their company was the upstart, and neither were most of the people there now. The institutional memory fades, and as it does, it creates the opportunity for the next generation? Perhaps. We'll get a chance to find out soon enough.